Think Yourself Lucky (6 page)

He was twenty minutes early for work. He took out his mobile as he came abreast of the travel agency, and was ready to go online when the door swung open, wagging its CLOSED sign. "You aren't busy, are you, David?" Andrea said.

"I could be for a few minutes."

He was thrown by her disappointed look. "I assumed you were here for us."

"Andy..." He felt as if he was pocketing the phone to make sure they weren't overheard. "I didn't know you still felt that way," he said and did his best to appear sympathetic.

"Just come inside."

She turned away before he could see her reaction, but once the door was shut she swung around to face him. "You know perfectly well that's all over. I very much hope you do."

"Well, I do now. I thought I did already." This didn't alter her expression, which was blank yet expectant without offering any hint of why, and so he tried adding "Only I thought you—"

"You're well aware I'm with someone else, David, and you seem to be."

"I don't just seem. Steph's been good for me. I hope what's his name is good for you."

"Rex. He is, and I don't care to discuss it with you any further."

David knew that tone from their months together. "We wouldn't be talking like this at all," he couldn't help pointing out, "except for what you said."

"I hardly think you can blame me, David. Exactly what are you accusing me of?"

"I thought you thought I was here for us."

"Yes." When her stare failed to convey the meaning she apparently believed it should, Andrea gestured at the racks of brochures, the dormant computers squatting on the counter. "Us," she said.

"I think I'm a bit early. I was just going to—"

"The brochures we wanted are in." She pointed to a heap of parcels with a Stanley knife on top. "We need them in the racks before we open."

"That shouldn't take long. I'll only be a little while and then—"

"May I remind you who's in charge here, David."

"You aren't in charge of me. I know you liked to think you were." He might have left that unsaid, but now he had to say "You can't be in charge when it isn't time yet. I want to do something for Steph."

"If you let her take precedence over your work I won't answer for the consequences. And may I just—"

"Come off it, Andy. No need to talk to me like that. There's nobody else to hear."

Andrea let out a long slow breath before she said "I won't have anybody undermining my authority. I think you'd better take time to consider what behaviour is appropriate in the workplace, David."

"All right, I'll go and do that now."

He was feeling stupidly triumphant when she said "For a start, don't call me Andy here. In fact, nowhere at all."

"Is Ms Randall all right?" David retorted, but only once he'd shut the staffroom door.

A faint smell of coffee lingered in the windowless room, where the walls were covered with posters ousted from the shop. Five straight not unduly padded armchairs kept their distance from a set of thinner seats resting their brows against a bare table marked with coffee rings. David laid his phone on the table and saw his fingerprint fade from the screen as the Frugonet icon brought him online. Very soon it was plain that he'd had less of an inspiration than he'd hoped. No local jobs for chefs were to be seen—not even any within an hour's drive or further away either. By now browsing had taken hold of his brain, one site leading him to another that tempted him to several more, besides which he found himself following random notions that seemed to belong less to his own mind than to the electronic medium. No wonder they called it the net or the web; he could have imagined that thoughts he hardly knew he had were being trawled for, if not drawn in by an insubstantial trap. He'd regained enough of himself to resist when it occurred to him to make one more search while he was online. He felt absurd for doing so, but he typed
Better Out Than In
, and in a moment was rewarded with a site.

It was an anonymous blog that seemed determined to live up to its title. While it took the form of stories told by a narrator as if they'd happened to him, presumably they were meant to be satirical; they were certainly outrageous enough, not least in the ways the blogger brought them to an end. At first David had to laugh at the exaggeration of it all, but what kind of mind could produce such material? He blamed the internet for letting loose the contents of the depths of people's minds, those aspects of themselves they might never have admitted before it existed. If he were a writer, perhaps he might have said the dark matter that had been released was forming a new species of monster. He was reading a rant about the patrons of a cinema when Emily came into the staffroom. "What have you done to our Andrea?" she murmured, having shut the door.

"I've done nothing to anyone. What am I supposed to have done?"

"She's in a sulk, that's all. Putting out the brochures and looking like she thinks someone else should." Emily moved to stand beside him. "David," she added as she read the screen, faking shock that nonetheless pinkened her cheeks. "I didn't know you went in for that kind of thing."

"I don't." He'd reached what he assumed was the end of the episode of the blog, in which the narrator followed a cinemagoer into the Gents. "It's what that fellow from the writers' group meant," David said. "The title was already out there."

"Are you going to find out what happens?"

"Don't blame me if it isn't nice," he said and scrolled down the page. "I've seen what he gets up to elsewhere."

"I'm glad this isn't you, then. Nobody could say you aren't nice."

Emily's face grew pinker, though he couldn't tell how much of this was caused by the story that crawled into view. All at once the phone skittered across the table as his hand jerked. "Oh, David," Emily cried. "I see what you mean."

Perhaps she did, but she couldn't see his thoughts. He recaptured the phone and peered at the screen in the hope of having been mistaken, but what he thought he'd seen was there. His head felt hollow and unstable, and all he could do was convince Emily that he'd been shocked for the reason she had. "We don't want any more of that, do we?" he declared and broke the connection. "Let's give Andrea a hand," he said, gripping the edge of the table until the dizziness went away. "As you say, it's a good job this has nothing to do with me."

He opened his eyes to find Stephanie's face close to his. It felt like being wakened by the sun until she said "What's wrong, David?"

At first he didn't quite know where he was or when. It was Sunday, and neither of them needed to get up, but this fell short of reassuring him. "Why is anything?" he mumbled.

"You don't usually talk in your sleep."

At once he was a good deal more awake. "What did I say?"

"I couldn't make most of it out."

"I expect it wasn't worth hearing. Just me using up my breath." He would rather not have added "You said most."

"You kept telling yourself not to say something." Stephanie reached out to caress his face as she murmured "You can say anything to me."

"I know. I have." Since this was inadequate he tried saying "You can understand I'm worried for you and your job."

"Don't be too much. There are a couple of places that wouldn't mind taking me on if I'm available. They mightn't pay so much, though." Before David could respond she said "Do I need to be worried about you?"

"I can't see why," David said but wondered if he should.

"I haven't caused you any more problems with Miss."

"Andrea, you mean." When Stephanie only gazed at him across her pillow David said "It wouldn't be your fault if I had."

"You're saying you have."

"None I can't laugh at."

"You can with me if you like."

"I will if I need to, then," David said and slipped an arm around her waist. "You know I don't like speaking ill of people. Speak ill and you'll be ill, my grandmother used to say her mother said."

"I just wish sometimes you'd share more of your thoughts."

"Suppose they aren't worth sharing?"

"If they're yours they are to me." Stephanie held his gaze while she said "You shouldn't ever be embarrassed. We ought to know all about each other."

"Maybe there's nothing you don't know about me." When he felt her waist grow slack against his arm he said "You know a lot more than Andrea."

"I should hope so, David."

Perhaps he needed her discontent to make him say "All right, I'll tell you why I think I was talking in my sleep. Did you ever have an imaginary playmate?"

"I had enough who were real."

"I had plenty of those, but I made one up when I was little." He had a sense of setting free the truth with no idea of the consequences. "I called him Lucky," he said.

"Oh," Stephanie murmured and stroked his back. "Does that mean you didn't think you were yourself?"

"No, I thought I was. I remember my parents kept saying we were, and I couldn't see any reason to argue. We were a lot luckier than the people they had to deal with every day."

"So why did you call him that, your friend?"

"Because he could do things I didn't dare and get away with them."

He saw a glimmer of naughty amusement in Stephanie's eyes. "You did them and blamed him, you mean."

"I wouldn't have, not the kind of things he did. I'm sure you wouldn't have wanted me to. He behaved like the children my parents talked about when they thought I couldn't hear."

"Well, you were a child yourself." Before David could decide whether she was offering this as an excuse or even wishing he'd misbehaved a little more, Stephanie said "Anyway, I thought we were supposed to be talking about—"

"We are." Just the same, it took some effort to say "He came back."

"hi your sleep, you're saying."

"Not last night and not while I was asleep. Long before that." With a laugh that hardly sounded like his David said "You might say he was me as I didn't grow up."

"I might if I knew what it meant."

"When I turned adolescent I was afraid I'd start being like the teenagers my parents had to cope with, so—"

"Poor David. You ought to have been able to let go at that age." With a smile not entirely free of wistfulness Stephanie said "You could a bit more now and then."

"That sounds like a complaint."

"Don't let it spoil our day. Just forward it to the appropriate department. Anyway," she said to return him to his subject, "you were being a teenager."

"Yes, and so I wouldn't be the wrong kind I brought him back."

"Your friend Lucky."

"I wouldn't call him that. More like bad company. You'll laugh, but I must have been trying to make myself think he wasn't a childish idea, so I gave him a last name."

"What did you call him?"

"Mr Newless, and don't ask me why. It didn't seem to have anything to do with me." For no reason he could think of David wondered if this was the first time he'd ever spoken the name. "I ended up using him when I was tempted to do anything I thought my parents mightn't like," he said. "He caused all sorts of mayhem, but only in my head. In a while I convinced myself I was what they wanted, and that got rid of him."

"So why were you thinking about him last night, do you think?"

"What I've just told you about, that wasn't the last time I called him up.

"You're making him sound like some kind of demon, David."

"Well, he wasn't." David stiffened so as not to yield to an unexpected shiver. As he pulled the quilt around them both he felt like a child trying to take refuge in bed. "He was just something I made up," he insisted. "And I did again while I was at university."

"I'd have thought you would have broken out of yourself there at least."

"I had fun, don't worry. It's a good thing I did, considering how hard I worked as well and where I've ended up."

"We have to take the best jobs we can get, don't we, even if there's more to us."

"There isn't that much more to me." He hoped Stephanie realised he wasn't saying the same about her. "The problem was," he said, "maybe I had a bit too much fun."

She made a joke of looking apprehensive. "What am I going to find out about you, David?"

"It was the only time I got into drugs."

"Well, they're out of your system now, and you needn't think I didn't. I shared a few bongs back then and ate the odd mushroom."

"I did all that too. I even had a year on cigarettes. You wouldn't have known that, would you?" For a moment David managed to feel he was sharing a secret, but he was too aware of keeping another. "Only once I went too far," he said.

"You're back now, though. What did you do?" Stephanie murmured and inched closer.

"I don't think any of us even knew what it was called. Give us a pill and we'd swallow it if it was something new that was going round the campus."

"Maybe that's how we had to be to grow into who we are now. So what happened, David?"

"I still don't know exactly what it did. Maybe someone at the university designed it, but we never found out who. It wasn't around very long. 
Maybe whoever made it panicked because they were afraid of being found out."

"What happened to you, I was asking."

"I know." David was aware of fending off the memory. "A few of us took it one night in somebody's room," he said. "Everyone else was happy just to lie around and have visions, but it didn't work that way for me. I had to get out."

"You aren't claustrophobic now, though. I suppose some drugs can make you feel you are."

"It wasn't just that. I was trying to get away from what I'd done."

"You couldn't just let go and enjoy it."

"It made me feel I couldn't, so I wandered off the campus on my own."

The memory was growing as vivid as any of the visions he'd wished he hadn't had. The old buildings of the university had glowed like bones in a fire, but he'd seen that the new blocks lit by white globes on stalks were fossils of the future. As he crossed a road, the cars that glared at him with their great eyes had seemed poised to multiply their speed the instant he stepped off the kerb. He'd had to walk through far too many streets composed of display cases furnished with a selection of people, unless the images within the frames were arcade games, since the figures didn't move until he stared at them. Despite the January chill, he'd felt his sweaty feet squelch at every step. At last he'd come into the open on the far side of a stile, which was as cold as metal and transformed his hands on it into wood. The electric amber sunset of the town had faded from the sky he'd left behind him, and eventually he'd lain down in the middle of a field that frost had turned into enormous spiky half-buried ribs. He'd felt the skeleton splinter beneath him, and then he'd been aware of nothing except the sky, where the moon had sharpened the edges of clouds as it crept from behind them. "Where did you end up?" Stephanie said.